The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Program in Creative Writing is designed to prepare students for careers in creative writing, by exploring and developing their skills as writers and providing them with a wide range of opportunities to connect with the arts and culture community. Critically acclaimed writers and literary professionals participate in the program as workshop instructors, mentors, and visitors. Through its master classes, workshops and plenary courses, the MFA Program aims to assist new writers in locating their work in both a global and a national context. Students will pursue the program on a full-time basis. The program has been designed to facilitate completion within two years.

Administrative Staff

Director, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Sally Hickson (425 MacKinnon, Ext. 53881)
shickson@uoguelph.ca
Graduate Program Coordinator
Canisia Lubrin (435 MacKinnon/Guelph-Humber R, 242 B)
clubrin@uoguelph.ca
Program Administrator, MFA Creative Writing Program
Libby Johnstone, (MacKinnon 432/Guelph-Humber 242 A)
cwmfa@uoguelph.ca

Graduate Faculty

This list may include Regular Graduate Faculty, Associated Graduate Faculty and/or Graduate Faculty from other universities.

MFA Program

Admission Requirements

The normal minimum requirement for admission to the MFA Program is a baccalaureate degree, in an honours program or the equivalent, from a recognized degree-granting institution. There are no requirements as to the discipline in which the degree was earned. Successful applicants will be expected to have achieved an average standing of at least a 'B-' in their last four semesters of study. A limited number of students, however, may be admitted to the MFA without having satisfied the degree requirement and/or academic standing requirements set out above if they are assessed as qualified to undertake graduate studies in creative writing on the basis of other experience and/or practice.

Admissions Portfolio

Students will be selected for admission to the MFA program primarily on the basis of a portfolio. The portfolio should be between 25 and 40 pages in length and may contain published and/or unpublished work and/or work-in-progress. It must include a minimum of two separate works (or excerpts from separate works). Applicants are encouraged to submit works in more than one genre, e.g., fiction and poetry. Considerations of balance over the program as a whole, with respect to genres in which applicants are particularly interested and particularly strong, will have some impact on admission decisions.

Program Requirements

Students are required to complete 3.0 credits of coursework, which include two plenary courses, three workshop courses and the individual study course, as shown below. Students also complete a thesis.

Students take one workshop and one plenary course in the first (Fall) semester of study; one workshop in the second (Winter) semester; the individual study course in the third (Summer) semester; and one workshop and a second plenary course in the fourth (Fall) semester. The remaining two semesters of the two-year program are devoted to the thesis. All students are required to complete at least six semesters of study.

Students may choose to take courses beyond the required 3.0 credits. Some relevant examples may include UNIV*6800 University Teaching: Theory and Practice or courses in English or Theatre Studies offered by the University of Guelph that support the student’s work.

Plenary Courses

There are two Plenary courses, CRWR*6000 Plenary Course: Writers on Writing and CRWR*6010 Plenary Course: Writers in the World, and both are required courses for MFA students. Plenary courses are offered on an alternate-year basis in the Fall semester, allowing students to take one in the Fall semester of their first year, and one in the Fall semester of their second year. These courses are intended in part to provide a forum for visiting writers and other literary professionals. Each course also has a substantial component addressing practical matters associated with the progress of a writer’s career.

Workshops

Students are required to take three workshops over the course of the program; the genres in which workshops are offered include fiction, decolonial fiction, the novel, poetry, writing for performance and screen, creative non-fiction and hybrid forms. Students are also required to ensure through their selection of workshops that they work in a minimum of two separate genres and are strongly encouraged to take workshops that include work in at least three genres. The workshops are strongly focused on writing, but each also incorporates a substantial reading component.

Individual Study Course

The individual study course, CRWR*6400 Practicum in Creative Writing, required in the third semester (Summer) of the program, pairs each student with a mentor. It is intended to install within the curriculum a critical opportunity to address the variable learning needs of individual students. For the majority of students, it is an intensive writing course, supplemented by a reading component that allows for additional work in the student’s primary genre and offers the chance to build a body of work towards the thesis. For some students, it may be primarily a reading course, with practice in writing in relation to particular models, or provide an opportunity to develop a significant project in a secondary genre.

Procedures

Candidates should be aware of the Schedule of Dates in the Graduate Calendar. Please note, the Creative Writing MFA program has also implemented internal expectations/deadlines that must be adhered to by the candidate; these internal expectations/deadlines are distributed by the Graduate Program Coordinator.

Thesis

The thesis is the single most important component of the Creative Writing MFA Program. Students should register for UNIV*7500 Research/Writing in each semester that they are writing their thesis. The thesis may be a novel, a book-length manuscript of poems, a collection of short stories, a full-length play or screenplay, a work of creative non-fiction, or a work of hybrid form. The standard to be applied is that the thesis should not be a first draft but have undergone significant revision and be approaching publishable quality in the estimation of the examiners.

Following the Master's examination, the candidate, if successful, will submit the creative thesis to the Atrium, with the choice of a circulation waiver. It will be retained permanently by the university.

One electronic (.pdf) copy of the certified creative thesis must be submitted to the Atrium by the thesis submission deadline date shown in the Academic Schedule in the calendar. Also included in the electronic submission must be a brief abstract consisting of no more than 150 words. The Certificate of Approval signed by the Examination Committee, a copy of the circulation waiver, and the copying license must also be submitted to the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. Departments may have a requirement to submit a bound copy of the thesis.

Master’s Examination

The Creative Writing MFA Examination Committee normally consists of three members appointed by the Graduate Program Coordinator:

• a member of the regular graduate faculty of the school or retired faculty with Associated Graduate Faculty status who is not a member of the Advisory Committee, and who acts as chair of the Master's Examination Committee and to make arrangements therefor;
• a member of the candidate's Advisory Committee (normally, the Advisor);
• a member of the graduate faculty who may be a member of the Advisory Committee (normally, the second reader).

Note

The Chair serves to administer and ensure the proper conduct of the examination. The Chair is expected to exercise full control over the proceedings and does not participate directly in questioning the candidate during the examination. In unforeseen circumstances where an examiner is unable to attend due to sudden illness, accident, etc., the Chair will attempt to receive questions to ask on behalf of the absent member, to be answered by the student to the satisfaction of the examiners.

At the time of the defence, the Creative Writing MFA candidate will be expected successfully to complete a final oral examination devoted chiefly to the creative thesis: the candidate should display a sophisticated critical awareness of their own creative practice.

The examination is open to the public; members of the audience may question the candidate only upon invitation of the Chair of the committee.

The Graduate Program Coordinator is responsible for notifying the Assistant Vice-President (Graduate Studies) of the composition of the committee, and for reporting to the Assistant Vice-President (Graduate Studies) the outcome of the examination.

The examination is passed and the creative thesis approved if there is no more than one negative vote. An abstention is regarded as a negative vote. The report to the Assistant Vice-President (Graduate Studies) will record the decision as unsatisfactory or satisfactory. If unsatisfactory, the candidate may be given the opportunity of a second attempt. A second unsatisfactory result constitutes a recommendation to the Board of Graduate Studies that the student be required to withdraw (see Unsatisfactory Progress and Appeals of Decisions).

School Regulations

The School may have specified regulations in addition to those described in this calendar. The student is responsible for consulting the school concerning any such regulation. University regulations, as specified herein, take precedence and may not be overruled by any school regulation.

Courses

For courses without a semester designation the student should consult the Graduate Program Coodinator or Program Administrator.